Despite driving a garbage truck for 13 years, Charles French, president of the Greensboro City Workers Union, makes only $30,000 a year.
Photograph: UPI / Barcroft Media

Charles French, the president of the Greensboro City Workers’ Union, took a mic and told the crowd to go to a nearby basketball court to watch a high-school dance team break it down.

The performance was part of a community festival in the North Carolina city, and the dance team was one of seven musical sets.

French, and other union leaders in the state, use public events like these to rally support for efforts to pass local minimum wage laws. On the face of it, it’s a difficult job. Public employees in North Carolina lack collective bargaining rights and the state’s political culture, dominated by Republicans, is often fiercely anti-union.

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But in this hostile environment, French, and others like him, have had some success: a cluster of cities, towns and counties across North Carolina, including Greensboro, have passed living wage ordinances for public employees, nudging wages above the federal minimum and putting much-needed extra cash in their pockets.

“We are the backbone of this city,” said French, a Greensboro municipal employee who despite driving a garbage truck for 13 years only makes $30,000 a year, or slightly less than $15 an hour.

Last year, French was part of a successful effort to pass a local ordinance in Greensboro to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour for all public employees. The raises will come into effect later this year. French and his union are also now working to build a step-raise system to increase the wages of employees making above $15 an hour.

With public works employees playing a key role in helping neighborhoods recently devastated by a tornado that took out 700 homes in East Greensboro, local politicians in the city are on their side.

“I don’t see how we can’t support their efforts,” said Greensboro city councilwoman Sharon Hightower. “If [they] weren’t out there picking up the trash and pushing the bulldozers and doing all the things that I can’t even fathom, I can’t even see how this city would survive.”

Workers in North Carolina say that they have been able to achieve gains without collective bargaining rights in a “right-to-work” state, by focusing on local politics and making progress town by town, city by city.

“Without collective bargaining rights, it’s just different strategies you have to do,” said Ramone Jackson, a Greensboro city water worker who also currently makes less than $15 an hour. “You have to get the community more involved, you have to get community groups, other business involved around that same views.”

Jackson’s union even got dozens of private business in Greensboro to voluntarily adopt a living wage in an effort to put more pressure on the city council to do something.

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Many municipal workers say they have to work in potentially dangerous professions on the side such as carpenters, builders and taxi drivers. French works a side gig as a tailor, admitting that putting in time on two jobs represents a safety risk due to exhaustion. He hasn’t been able to afford a vacation in five years.

But that might change now when his pay rise arrives. French said the coming wage increase means he can look forward to taking time off and being able to take a vacation.

“It will be nice to be able to take some time away for myself and relax,” said French.

Though North Carolina and other southern states have a reputation of being tough for union organizing, there have been some notable recent successes. Earlier this month, 20,000 teachers and their supporters marched on the North Carolina state capitol to draw attention to low pay and poor funding of public schools as part of a wave of strikes that have hit the education sector nationwide.

The first female president of the North Carolina AFL-CIO union, MaryBe McMillan, believes the need to organise people in her state and the wider region has never been greater.

“We really have to organize working people in the south,” she said. “They are the most exploited, they are the ones that are paid the least and that means really investing resources and putting organizers on the ground.”